Thiebaud Cakes

Our second grade learned all about the dessert-loving artist Wayne Thiebaud and then did a project inspired by his work. We began by drawing a cylinder shape that took up most of an 8.5" x 11" white sheet of paper. We then drew the cake missing a piece. We did this by drawing two parallel lines going up onw of the sides of the cakes. Then we made a little dot in the center of the top of the cake and connected to tops of the 2 parallel lines to the dot. We then erased the horizontal lines from the cake that were trapped between the two parallel lines. Students were then instructed to pick what flavor their cakes would be and then color in where the cake had been cut accordingly (ex: mine above is chocolate with strawberry filling). All coloring is done with oil pastels because it creates a great texture. Students then color/decorate the rest of their cake.

When finished coloring, students will cut our their cake and then put it on a sheet of 8.5 x 11" colored construction paper to create their cake stand. Cut that out. Then lay your cake on the stand on a 12" x 18" different colored piece of construction paper and glue down. As a finishing touch, draw the glass cover using a piece of white chalk.

Pattern High Five

This is a great colored pencil project. We started with a plain piece of paper that had a 1/2" grid on it  with diagonal lines through each square in the grid. You can kinda get an idea of what it looked like by looking at the pictures. I had the students draw on the back of the paper (the blank side), so they could still see the grid through the paper, but the finished product didn't have all of those distracting lines.

First, Students lightly traced their hand somewhere on the page. Then they chose a pair of complementary colored pencils to work with. One color would be for the hand and the other for the background. In each 1/2" square, there are 2 triangles. They were instructed to color the bottom one darker by pressing harder and the top one lighter by pressing more lightly with their colored pencil. This is a time consuming project, but it turns out amazing!

This student is about half-way done

This student got very creative and fit 2.5 hands and used 3 pairs of complementary colors:)

Shape Chain

This lesson is great because it covers so many elements of design -shape, line, color, form... We start off using pencil to draw different shapes starting at the bottom of the page all the way to the top. Each one needs to be touching in some way, as to create a chain connecting the bottom of the page to the top. Students then have the option to create holes/cut-outs in the shapes. They then draw in the shadows on the side of each letter and inside each hole. Students then go over all of their pencil lines with permanent marker and then create different line design in the background. Now they are ready to color in each shape using bright colored markers. By leaving the background in black and white and adding the shadow to the shapes, it really makes them pop!

The Dot

I love Peter Reynolds. We read the book The Dot and then created our own dot paintings. We began by using permanent markers (because you can't erase any mistakes this way). The kids drew a dot somewhere on the page and then just went with it. They filled their whole page and then painted it in with watercolors. This is a great lesson for helping students get over perfectionist anxieties:)

Pop Hands

 The kid's hands fit in the boxes a little better than mine did:)

This lesson goes great with a lesson on Pop Art -focusing on Andy Warhol. This lesson used bright acrylic paints, so be sure to wear paint shirts to avoid any accidents. First, we worked with rulers to evenly divide up the paper into 6 equal squares. Then students traced their hand in each square. After drawing it all out with pencil, the kids then painted in each square and hand with bright acrylic paint. I encouraged them to use colors that weren't too similar to each other in the same square. After all the squares were painted and dried, students then painted the same hand that they traced with black tempura paint (because it easily washes off). They then stamp their hand print onto each previously bright-color-painted hand. They look Amazzzing when finished!

Native American Pottery

This is a fun, easy lesson that the kids really enjoy. We began by discussing why native Americans would make pottery long ago and how it has changed today. We then decorated our own pottery using colored pencils and then cut them out and glued them to colored paper. We looked at modern pots to get ideas for designs.

Musical Collage

This was a fun oil pastel project that I had my fourth graders create. We began with picking an instrument and then focusing on it's different parts and then zooming in on those in the picture. They drew out their picture using black oil pastels and then filled in everything with bright colors. I encouraged the students to use colors that weren't typical of their instruments. This was good practice for using oil pastels to fill in large areas -some students even went ahead and blended colors together! They looked awesome. As a final touch, students were given some random sheet music that I printed off the computer and cut/tore it and then arranged it on their work.

Read Across America!

As part of Read Across America, our school had a door decorating contest. We had to use Dr. Seuss characters. I had a lot of fun creating mine. Because of all of the focus on Dr. Seuss that week, I decided we had to do an art project that incorporated some of his work.

So, for a few classes, we looked at and discussed the fish in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.We then created a background in the Dr's style using strips of bright colored tissue paper and then created our own fish, similar to the ones in the book. I showed them step-by-step how to make a swimming fish and a standing-up fish. They drew and colored them in using oil pastels. They were then cut out and glued to the background. This was a lot of fun and, as you'll see, the first graders were very proud of their work:)